Orphans with disabilities suffer from the ban on overseas adoption in China

Eight-year-old Grace Welch has been waiting for her older sister since 2019 to take the bed next to hers.

Her parents had told her that, Penelope, 10 years old born in China, will join the family, which lives in Kentucky in the US.

Grace, who was also adopted in China, was born without a left arm. Her mother, Aimee Welch, said Penelope also has a special need that is “serious but manageable,” though she declined to reveal it.

The Welch family, who have four biological sons, want to adopt children with disabilities after the birth of a nephew who has no arms.

“He taught us all that a person with different limbs can reach each other with love and proper support. Her birth started us on the path to adopting Grace,” said Ms. Welch. “We believe in the respect and value of each person, as they are, in all their diversity.”

But the epidemic delayed their plans.

Then in September, China announced that it was to stop international acquisitionsincluding cases where families have already been matched with foster children.

The agonizing wait will especially determine the fate of China’s most vulnerable children – those with special needs.

Recent statistics are not readily available, however Beijing Public Affairs Department he said 95% of international adoptions between 2014 and 2018 involved children with disabilities.

These children “will have no future” without international adoption as they are unlikely to be adopted at home, said Huang Yanzhong, an official at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Ms Welch said Grace was devastated by the news that Penelope might not be coming home: “She told me, ‘We were meant to be a family of eight so everyone would have a friend.'”

Ms Welch called on China to “keep promises made to children who are already matched with adoptive parents”.

Beijing has not commented since the September announcement, in which it thanked the families for their “love to welcome children from China.” It said the ban was in line with international agreements and reflected “the development and progress of China as a whole”.

China began to allow international adoption in 1992 as the country opened up, and reached a peak in the mid-2000s. More than 160,000 children have been adopted by families around the world in the last thirty years.

The controversial one-child policy had forced families to abandon children, especially girls and children with special needs. Social stigma around disability has led to many children with special needs ending up in orphanages.

Dani Nelson, who was adopted from the US in 2017, said she was given basic care at an orphanage in the southwestern city of Guiyang, but “not enough for me to live a normal life”.

The 21-year-old was born with spina bifida – a spinal cord deformity – and hydrocephalus, a neurological disorder that causes water to pool in his brain.

In his first three years in the US, he underwent seven surgeries that he says helped him “live a normal life”.

“I joined the swimming team. I got a job… The adoption saved my life,” said Ms Nelson, who now works as a cashier at a coffee shop.

As in many Asian societies, people with disabilities in China face discrimination and are sometimes even seen as a source of “bad luck”.

China has made some strides in improving accessibility for the disabled, but public infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is still weaker than in Western countries. It has just begun to develop educational facilities and curriculum for students with special needs.

Only the severely disabled receive financial support from the government.

The BBC has interviewed elderly Chinese people with special needs parents have had to stop working to take care of them.

Aware of these challenges, waiting families are worried about what will happen to the children they were meant to adopt, some of whom need urgent medical treatment.

Meghan and David Briggs were matched with a boy in Zhengzhou, Henan, in 2020. The 10-year-old “has a special need that requires medical intervention”, Mrs Briggs said.

The couple lives with their 10-year-old son in Pennsylvania. Mr Briggs said the family had made a “deliberate decision” to adopt a child who was at high risk and was less likely to receive special care and treatment at a Chinese facility than a family in the US.

“Such care is a financial and emotional responsibility. We were ready to provide this care because we consider this child as our family,” said Mr. Briggs who was also adopted in South Korea.

“The family was promised by his government,” Ms Briggs said. “The children are the ones who will be hurt by this decision,” he said.

Not everyone agrees.

Others, including elderly adoptees, are relieved that Beijing has ended foreign adoptions.

“My experience as an adopted child growing up in a predominantly white, Christian town is that you are often looked down upon. I was always reminded that I don’t belong,” said Lucy Sheen, who was adopted by a white family in the UK.

Ms Sheen, now in her 60s, added that her adoptive family had little knowledge of her Chinese culture and heritage. You were once told that you asked to learn Mandarin.

“Some adoptees have a ‘savior’ attitude or have the idea that they bring us where they come from because ‘the West is the best’, I think that has to change,” he added.

The Nanchang Project, a non-profit group that helps connect adopted children with their roots in China, said there was a “sense of relief that no more children will be separated from their place of birth, culture and identity”.

“We hope this time can focus on the need for adoption services to support Chinese adoptees and their families throughout their lives,” the group said in a statement last month.

Under the new policy, China will only send children overseas for adoption if the adoptive parents are blood relatives. The BBC understands that US authorities are in talks with Beijing about whether some exceptions can be made for waiting families.

John and Anne Contant, who were paired with five-year-old Corrine in 2019, said they “respect China’s decision to change the course of its adoption policy”.

“If there are many families who want to be adopted at home, that’s good… Our request is about these 300 children who have been compared [to families in the US] so that they are allowed to return home,” he said.

The couple lives in Chicago with six children. Three of them were adopted from China and live with albinism, as does Corinne.

The Contants spoke to Corinne via WeChat when their plans to go to China were canceled due to the epidemic.

“Corinne met our children, saw her home and the room that had been prepared for her, and experienced the joy our children had in preparing for her arrival,” said Mr Contant.

“During one of our conversations, he bluntly asked, ‘When are you going to pick me up?’